Think About It: Sub Par Performance

Last week, a state judge OK'ed paying substitute teachers for work they had done… over a decade ago! Yes, that's right, the case was originally brought against the state in 2002. And now, 12-years later- since payments still won't get sent out for five months- it looks like the 10,000 or so substitute teachers will get, on average, $1,400 each for their work. There is still the question about interest payments. Waiting a decade to get paid gives new meaning to the concept of "the check's in the mail".

What's confounding about the excruciatingly slow wheels of justice in this case is that in 2009, the Intermediate Court of Appeals ruled that the state underpaid thousands of teachers in the first five years of the decade. And in 2010, the state Supreme Court sent the case back down to Circuit court to figure out just how much to pay the teachers. Apparently, that math calculation took another three-years, which might be a case of the state playing games by stalling after it had been told to pay up.

Undoubtedly, there were reasons the state felt justified in not keeping substitute teacher pay on par with so-called Class II teachers, or teachers without enhanced training, but did this whole mess really need to take over a decade to be resolved? In the end, the substitute teachers will get what they should have gotten long ago- fair pay for the work they did, and they might even get some interest- but allowing this case to fester and get tossed around through the court system seems like bureaucracy at its worst and sour grapes on the part of the state, who should have known better and acted better years ago. Think about it…